


A Life Half Lived

by Arathe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Implied Relationships, Jossed, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arathe/pseuds/Arathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Castiel fell, it seemed like a gift. It doesn't take him long to realize it's nothing of the sort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Life Half Lived

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote the majority of this somewhere around two years ago and decided I should probably finish it.
> 
> Naturally it's been thoroughly jossed over the last two seasons, but let's just pretend.

Dean dies on a Saturday.

It’s a perfectly mundane death, Castiel learns later. A traffic accident. Not Dean’s fault, of course. He treats the Impala with a nigh-religious care that is at wild odds with his reckless disregard for his own safety. It isn’t until much later that Castiel recognizes the dark irony of his death. Dean Winchester was a man firm in the conviction that his end would come at the point of tooth and claw, the hunter becoming the hunted. Instead he’s killed by a man who falls asleep at the wheel, exhausted from pulling a double shift.

Castiel isn’t there. He’s fallen— not in the traditional sense, torn from his grace and wholly human. Rather he’s something in between, growing more human by the day and yet retaining enough of his grace that he knows he’ll never fully make the transformation. A compromise of sorts that he readily accepts in spite of the trials presented by his descent into humanity.

The day Dean dies Castiel is sick with the flu. He’s never been ill before, not in any true physiological sense and it feels like he’s dying. Sam smiles full of sympathy, plies him with fluids and assures him that he’s doing nothing of the sort.

The hunt can’t wait on Castiel’s health, and Sam and Dean draw straws to see who goes to the old farmhouse and who stays behind.

The last words Dean ever speaks to him are, “Get some rest, okay Cas?” His fingers ghost over Castiel’s hair, a comforting touch. He closes his eyes with a nod and slips into a light doze before Dean leaves.

Dean’s death strikes Castiel like a shock of cold water, startling him out of sleep even as his grace cries out. Sam’s concern does not even register before he’s gone, flying to Dean’s side in blind, swift panic. His grace trembles, utterly bereft as Castiel tears the door from the Impala in desperation, crawling across the twisted ruin of the front seat and grasping at Dean’s unmoving form. He’s battered and bloodied, and Castiel hears a moan from the other vehicle and simply does not care, all of his being focused on Dean.

A breathless moment, and Castiel’s hands begin to tremble when he realizes that the scraps of his grace are not up to the task. He doesn’t have the power to bring him back. He is no stranger to grief, but the emotion that wells up is so black and terrible that it chokes him. He slumps forward, head on Dean’s shoulder and fingers tight in his shirt, and screams. Hoarse prayers of desperation, he calls for his brothers by name. Remiel, Israfel, Sariel, _anyone._ Not Dean, not this, and Castiel would give his life a thousand times over to undo what has been done.

They do not come.

The sound of sirens filter through his grief, and there are voices speaking to him, hands pulling at him. Castiel doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to leave Dean, but his body is weak and the hands pull him away.

Someone drapes a blanket around his shoulders and asks questions he cannot answer. He must have mentioned Sam, because at some point he hears his name and Sam is there, face pinched and worried. He must read the truth on Castiel’s face because his expression crumples and the sound he makes is wounded. He gathers Castiel into the circle of his arms, and something inside him breaks. A sob rips from his throat and cries into Sam’s shoulder, shattered in a way he can’t accept.

They give Dean a hunter’s funeral, and take the ashes back Kansas so that he can rest beside his mother. 

Castiel and Sam stand shoulder to shoulder, overcome with a grief that isn’t lessened by being shared.

The weeks pass and some of his remaining grace threads itself slowly through Sam’s soul. It doesn’t fill the void left by Dean, but it makes them feel a little less alone. Sam is all he has left.

They’re back on the road before long, because hunting is all they know. Sam teaches him to drive, and they switch off from time to time. The music is always Dean’s, because it’s the only thing that’s right. Castiel feels closest to Dean when it’s just them, the Impala and a long stretch of deserted road, and he can feel the sentiment echo back from Sam along the tatters of his grace. It’s not contentment, but it’s something almost like it.

Weeks stretch into months, and one night Castiel’s awoken by Sam stumbling into the room they’ve rented in the middle of nowhere. He reeks of alcohol, and Castiel struggles to sit, to tear himself from the grasp of sleep.

He’s been human for just over a year now, and the thing he hates the most is sleep. The way it steals you away, drags you under, makes you muzzy and slow.

He was sleeping when Dean died.

“Sam?” he asks, voice rough and weary and full of concern. It’s just after two and while Sam might drink more than he used to, this is something different; something wrong.

Sam’s breath stutters, and he pitches forward, tumbling onto the bed and into Castiel’s lap. For a terrified moment Castiel thinks he’s hurt, or sick, but then Sam’s hugging him tight enough to hurt and Castiel can feel wet tears against his throat. “I miss him,” Sam croaks.

Castiel holds him tight. “So do I.”

Sometimes they talk about giving up the life, talk about finding a nice town and settling down, talk about giving normal a shot.

They never do.

Sam dies on a Monday.

He dies on a hunt, nearly five years after they lost Dean. They think they’re hunting one werewolf, but it turns out to be two. It all happens so fast. They have one cornered but Sam takes a hit from the second, knocking him flat with a wet tearing sound. Castiel takes out the first and is after the other in a heartbeat, but the werewolf manages to lose him.

He returns to find Sam nearly eviscerated, his arms the only thing keeping his entrails inside. He falls to his knees with a breathless, “Sam.”

Sam blinks at him dazedly as Castiel fumbles for his phone. He’s still alive. He’ll be okay. Castiel calls 911 because what remains of his healing powers aren’t up to this, and when he’s done he puts his hands on Sam and tries anyway.

Sam coughs weakly. “It’s okay, Cas,” he says, gentle and not afraid.

Castiel shakes his head sharply. “It’s not okay,” he growls, and it’s not working. His grace is too weak, the damage is too great. His jeans are soaked through with blood and Sam is smiling at him and Castiel can’t do this again. If he loses Sam he has nothing left. “Please.” His throat is tight and his eyes sting, Castiel is trying but it isn’t enough, and it’s Dean all over again.

“It’s okay, Cas,” Sam says again. The words are weak and his eyelids are drooping. He’s lost so much blood. “Everyone has to die eventually, right?”

Castiel gathers Sam into his arms as gently as he can, clutching at his shoulder with trembling hands. “Please.” He isn’t sure who exactly he’s pleading with. With Sam, his brothers, his Father. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Fingers on his face, slick with blood and he can see Sam smile through a haze of tears. “You’ll be okay. I’ll tell Dean you said hi.” He takes a shallow, shuddering breath. “Catch you on the flipside, Cas.”

By the time the ambulance arrives, Sam is already gone.

The first thing Castiel does is take Sam back to Lawrence. He should rest as he had lived— by his brother’s side.

The second thing he does is hunt down the werewolf responsible for Sam’s death. He puts it down with cold satisfaction, but revenge does nothing to heal the wound left by the loss of the only family that ever really counted.

Castiel feels guilty for keeping the Impala, feels like he doesn’t have the right, even though there’s no one else. 

He drifts through his days in a haze, uncertain and heartbroken. He’s gotten used to the small ins and outs of humanity, all the things he has to do to maintain his body even though he still hates sleeping. It only occurs to him just how little he knows about being self-sustained when the first credit card stops working.

Sam and Dean funded their hunting through a combination of credit card scams, odd jobs and hustling pool. Castiel doesn’t know how to do any of these things. After Dean died Sam always took care of the finances. He spends a day researching employment on Sam’s laptop, realizing quickly that he simply doesn’t have the credentials required. His driver’s license is fake and would not stand up to scrutiny. He has no social security number. As far as the United States government is concerned, Castiel doesn’t exist. He has no marketable skills besides hunting. Obtaining employment would be next to impossible.

For the first time since his fall, Castiel hates his humanity with every fiber. He is wounded and grieving and so very alone, and it isn’t fair that he has to worry about how he’s going to survive when he can scarcely muster the energy to live.

He keeps hunting because it’s all he knows. The credit cards go dead one by one, and Castiel hoards his small stockpile of cash carefully, reserving the money for fuel and ammunition. He sleeps out of the Impala most of the time, scrunched up in the back seat, but he doesn’t mind because it’s home.

He’s hungry more often than not. Food is easier to steal and therefore not worth his dwindling resources. Castiel hates being reduced to committing petty theft in order to survive. An angel of the Lord reduced to pocketing snack cakes at mini marts just to keep going. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

One night he pulls into a gas station/coffee shop combo, and once he pays for his gas he can’t help but linger by the display case on his way out. He has enough change for a coffee and muffin. Castiel shakes his head and curls his fist, stuffing the money back in his pocket. As nice as it would be, even that small amount would be a waste.

He glances up and realizes the girl behind the counter is watching him with kind eyes. “Sorry, I was just looking,” he manages, turns to go.

“I’m going to be throwing it all out in about ten minutes,” she says before he can leave. “Kind of a waste. I can pack you up a box if you want. On the house.”

Castiel swallows and nods and the girl loads him up with more than a box. She gives him enough bagels and donuts and muffins to last him a week. She tops it off with a cup of coffee and a soft smile.

And so for the space of weeks and months Castiel survives on deft fingers and guilt, and more rarely the charity of others. Once or twice a successful hunt will earn him a cup of coffee or a sandwich from a grateful survivor.

Six months after Sam’s death and when Castiel is almost at the end of his money, he gets a call from Garth. They’d worked together a few times before Sam died. He’s a good man, if a little odd. As it turns out, there’s a large vampire nest is Texas he needs a hand clearing out. Castiel agrees.

The moment they meet Garth scans him from head to toe, brows pinching together in concern. Castiel knows he looks like a wreck; he’s lost too much weight and hasn’t had a hot shower in weeks. “How you holding up?” he asks, and Castiel knows he’s talking about Sam.

Castiel shrugs. He’s not being flippant, he’s just not sure how to answer. He’s tired and hungry all the time, but it distracts him from being lonely and broken. Maybe it’s a fair trade.

Garth frowns a little but the expression wipes away a moment later. “Where’re you staying?” he asks, hefting a thick file. “We should go over this.”

“I’m not staying anywhere,” Castiel says. “I’ve been sleeping out of the Impala.”

Something like understanding lights Garth’s face and he says a little too casually, “Alright then, might as well come back to my room. Got two beds and I could use the company anyway.”

Gratitude wells in his chest so strong that Castiel has to take a moment and breathe. 

After they take care of the nest, Garth wheedles the story of the last six months out of him. He’s reluctant to share, a little ashamed of how badly he’s adapted to being human, adapted to being alone. Once Garth realizes the situation, he spends the next few days getting Castiel a false identity that would stand up to all but the closest scrutiny, a few credit cards and significant sum of cash for emergencies. 

They part ways a week later, and it’s the first time someone who isn’t Dean or Sam ever hugs him. 

It takes Castiel another twenty years to realize he isn’t aging. It’s the anniversary of Dean’s death and he’s drowning at the bottom of a fifth of tequila. An ugly mirror takes up most of the wall opposite, and he’s struck with the drunken epiphany that he looks no older than he had the day he fell.

Castiel has always assumed that a human lifespan would be part of the deal, although he’s never been sure what would happen when he died. For the first time, staring at the broken man in the mirror, he isn’t so sure. He shakes his head and drains the bottle. No, he isn’t going to live forever. Not even God could be so cruel.

He spends the rest of the night thinking about the past and prodding the gaping hole in his grace where Dean used to be.

It’s ninety years from the day he fell when Castiel has to retire the Impala. She still runs as well as the day she had come into his care; his grace enough for that at least. Castiel has existed in a strange sort of stasis, but the world has been passing him by, bit by bit. 

He should have retired her years ago, he knows that. She’s an antique, a relic and she draws far too much attention these days. She is also the only home that Castiel has ever had, even if the people who made her so were long dead and buried. He doesn’t want to give her up, but gas-powered vehicles are no longer street legal, having long been supplanted by their sleeker, quieter, more environmentally friendly electric cousins.

Castiel has a little property in Montana; not really a home, but a safe place to retreat to when he needs to lay low or nurse his wounds. He parks her outside the ramshackle cabin and spends three weeks sleeping cramped in the back seat, surrounded by the smell of old leather and the spectre of family loved and lost.

Castiel goes back to Montana between almost every hunt after that, because his slick little replacement is just a car, and home is resting safely under a tarp in the backwoods of nowhere.

There’s no telling when it started, but Castiel realizes one day that he prays to Dean more than he ever does God. Dean’s no angel— there’s no way he can hear when Castiel speaks to him, but it’s still a comfort in a roundabout way. He rests against the windshield of the Impala, beer dangling from his fingers and staring up at the stars as if he could see Dean if he only looked long enough.

“I’m tired, Dean,” he confesses, tossing the empty bottle into the dirt and letting his head fall back with a thud. “I was happy when I fell. Did I ever tell you that? It was like God was giving me everything I could never permit myself to want, in spite of all of my failings.”

It had seemed too good to be true. In spite of all the of difficulties presented by a human form, bodily functions and emotions run amok, the constant erosion of his grace, despite all of it Castiel had felt _blessed._ He had lost Heaven but had gained the Winchesters, and it had felt like nothing so much as a gift. Then Dean had died, and Sam, and Castiel had realized his newfound humanity was no blessing.

It was punishment.

He had overstepped himself. Castiel had rebelled like no angel since Lucifer, and it was folly to think there was anything _but_ punishment awaiting him. It took him a while to realize. It took the loss of the only two people on the whole of the Earth that he loved, took the steady march of years and the dawning realization that he had been left enough grace to sustain himself indefinitely.

Castiel had lived millennia, but all of his countless years combined did not weigh so heavily as these last hundred. 

“I miss you.” Angels did not go to heaven when they died. They simply ceased to be. There would be no one waiting for him at the end of this road. His family is gone and he would not be permitted the comfort of a reunion. In all the ways that mattered, Castiel had died with Sam. He’s just going through the motions until his sentence is up. He drags a hand wearily over his eyes. “I just want it to be over.” 

It’s the 150th anniversary of Dean’s death.

Castiel’s exhausted and bloodied, sitting in a car that isn’t home, staring at the gun in his hands like a revelation.

He’s not sure why the thought took a century and a half to manifest. It seems so obvious. Castiel is back in Montana, sitting on the hood of the Impala and turning the gun over in his hands. Whether or not he’d be permitted to die is questionable, but after so many years alone, so many years nursing the ragged, bleeding holes in his grace where _they_ should be, it almost seems like it would be worth a try.

Castiel places the gun on hot metal, sliding off the hood and climbing into the backseat. He curls up on sun-warmed leather and wonders.

In the end Castiel doesn’t kill himself. Suicide is a sin, and while Castiel doesn’t have to worry about the state of his immortal soul, there are some lines even the most rebellious of angels isn’t willing to cross.

Castiel dies on a Thursday.

A powerful revenant has taken up residence in the basement of an old condemned high school. It’s three hundred and twenty-one years after Dean’s death. Both of Castiel’s legs are broken and the revenant is drinking him dry.

Consciousness is slipping and Castiel knows he’s dying. He isn’t scared so much as he’s relieved, and he realizes he’s laughing when the revenant jerks away, staring at him with milky eyes and a smear of Castiel’s blood on its lips. He’s too weak to fight, can barely move, but manages to croak, “What are you waiting for?”

The revenant blinks once, and apparently agrees, returning to its feast with the clamp of sharp teeth at Castiel’s throat. He’s so far gone that it barely hurts.

_“Catch you on the flipside,Cas.”_ Sam’s voice in his mind so clear it might have been yesterday.

_Sorry Sam,_ he thinks, and waits for oblivion to claim him.

Oblivion does not oblige, and he blinks once, twice, and all he can see is light and a pair of smiling green eyes. “Heya Cas,” comes a voice more familiar than his own skin, and for the first time in over three hundred years Castiel’s grace is whole.


End file.
